


Like Amway with Guns

by IndigoJones



Category: Death Note
Genre: Death Note Kink Meme, Established Relationship, Hurt/Comfort, Loss of Virginity, M/M, Prostitution, Russian Mafia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-10
Updated: 2013-10-10
Packaged: 2017-12-29 01:17:51
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,424
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/999151
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/IndigoJones/pseuds/IndigoJones
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Written for Death Note Kink Meme 2 prompt:"Never thought of another way Mello could have got such a high rank in the Mafia. Pairing RodRoss/Mello kink is prostitution (Mello whores himself to get into the Mafia. Plus Mello is a virgin. PlusPlus theoretically he is with Matt, they just hadn't had sex."</p><p>Written in style of Another Note, warnings for cross dressing, prostitution, non-explicit references to underage sexy-times (offscreen) angsty backstories, some very dubious sexual situations, violence, masturbation and foot massages.</p><p>And L makes a cameo appearance. Lemon with a lemony narrator.</p><p>This repost tidies up the tensing errors in the kink meme reply post. I hope.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Like Amway with Guns

Higher Source were your average tech and rainbows California whackos. 

As I don’t need to tell the know- it-alls currently rolling their eyes at me, their ordinariness ended abruptly one spring morning when the police raided. They found thirty-nine bodies in a state of early decomposition each with a polythene bag taped over the head. 

Gentle up suicide cult and they’re usually top of the list.

But what you know- it- alls almost certainly do not know, because the San Diego Department of Social Services expressly requested the press not to report it, was that the thirty nine bodies were all found downstairs. Upstairs, they found one seven year old kid bashing buttons on his Sega Genesis.

So I’m not the worst thing that’s happened to Matt. But being sweet sixteen with a whore that won’t put out must run it pretty close. 

 

*

 

The buzzer went again. I put down my pen and straightened up. It’s a strange sensation going from writing to being, like pouring yourself back into a mould. So where my body is is in a plywood box about twelve feet square somewhere under Los Angeles. It is arranged neatly, almost demurely which is not in any way a state that comes naturally too it.

Back in my skin, the cheap velvet of the couch is digging in to the bare flesh at the top of my thighs. I am waiting for none other than Mr. Rod Ross, a name I do not need to explain to anyone with a passing knowledge of organised crime, Mr. Valeri Tymoshenko who will be equally familiar and a Secret Services raid.

Outside, a woman giggles and coos. There is a blast of bass heavy music and then a door is pulled shut again. So far, Mr Ross has kept me waiting for two and a half hours. Due to having left my previous base on the six am sly I have not had anything to eat today and it would not be in keeping with the red plush and tea-lit ambience if my stomach was to start rumbling.

I pick the pen back up and go back into the pages. It wasn’t so bad. But I hadn’t come to LA to sit in a plywood box and I was starting to get antsy.

 

*

 

Little-Thief lived on the roof of an old paper mill. He slept in the machine hut where the elevator had been, bathed in an oil drum that collected rainwater and wrote in his note book looking down over the spiked and turreted skyline to the glittering sea. 

He shared the roof with two half grown kittens and a family of seagulls raising their noisy speckled offspring. Otherwise, he was undisturbed. The fire escapes were privatised by scrap-scavengers shortly after the factory closed and tricky climb of window ledges and ventilation shafts was impassable to the drunk, stoned or fully grown. 

Little-Thief did not know one day he will end up in Los Angeles. What he knew were the boulevards, the cafes where the rich men from abroad drink and talk into mobile phones. He knew how to beg sugar cubes and the tiny almond biscuits, how to make the kits purr by stealing cartons of cream for them, how to get the men to follow him to back alleys and empty buildings where their Euros and Dollars can be easily removed. 

Corporate directors become very creative with their investments when threatened with free web hosting of footage of them soliciting sex from an eight-year old child. 

Little-Thief was careful to stay freelance, offering his services to each of the city’s gangs, declining their offers of hospitality and providing each with enough information on each other to keep the creaky peace. He did not drink of huff glue, returned his books on time to the central library and kept strong by swimming daily in the blue, contaminated ocean.

L never involved himself with a case unless there was more than a million dollars at stake. Little-Thief never cared for England, for the grey skies and the constant drizzle and the endless rules about behaving oneself. But he felt much better about things when he found that out. 

 

*

 

Of course, it must be most obvious to even the slowest of my readers that Little-Thief and your narrator were once one and the same. So should I drop the pretence? He was not so very long ago sitting in this very same skin, looking out these eyes, holding his pen exactly as I am holding mine. But the truth is he feels like a fictional ancestor to the current occupant. 

Little-Thief was insubstantial, like a fairy or a ghost. He lived for the taste of sugar, the swell of warm water and the furry whorls of the kits curled up against him. He cared for no-one and was connected to nothing so that when he finally disappeared from his rooftop perch it went as unremarked as the dissipation of sea mist in the mid-morning sun.

I believe Wammy’s House would have liked me to continue in this state of dislocation. Set up by a genius, designed to mass-produce genius, it was not a regime with any place for the irrational. Their success story was a porridge coloured homunculus that bloomed asexually from the carpet each morning in a burst of baby powder and E-45 cream. He had an IQ of 204 and the emotional age of a five year old. As I said, that is what Wammy’s House considered success.

But if they had wanted me to be like that they committed several fundamental errors. They should not have fed me so well. They should not have given me a warm bed to sleep in, so that within eight weeks of being there I had grown five inches and put on nearly twenty pounds. They should not have given me a room share with the lazy-eyed L-code refusnik so calm that not even I could irritate. Above all, they should not have let me meet L.

These things destroyed Little-Thief. He became connected to the faces around him by new and runaway emotions: love, hate, anger, desire, envy, trust. He could not help them, they had arrived as uninvited as any of the other changes happening to his body, and yet he knew their presence was somehow a black mark under the current regime. So slowly he faded back into the flimsy dream world of childhood, and a new creature, all angles and bones emerged. He is who lives here now. His name is Mello.

 

*

 

The room swims back, the mirror, the cheap prints of porno-girls and the sharp and citrus smell of Jeyes Fluid. It’s hard to stay focused when you’re waiting this hard and even all the tricks of Wammy’s House won’t get me to relax. You see, the things I am waiting for need to happen in an exact sequence. If they do I have a plan. If I don’t, well I have a rather unfortunate mess that will probably be the death of me.

That was another difference of opinion between Wammy House and Mello. Wammy House set great store in the ability to make plans. But really - how often does anything occur in the order you want it too? Perhaps in England where the buildings are old and people grumblingly wait in line. But it does not happen in the new and angry places of the world. Underneath Los Angeles nobody is playing by the Marquis of Queensbury’s. That’s why I remembered to steal Sasha’s gun.

The only plan that’s worth shit is to be prepared for anything.

I knew I’d be on camera so I did my best to sit like a girl. There are always cameras in places like this to prevent any cash transfers not through official channels. But I don’t care that they can see that I am writing. I’m not deluding myself that I am a great storyteller – I do not have time to sit down and worry at words long past the events in question. 

I write because I want to leave something behind, so if I do die before I make it there will still be something of me, some snapshots of the world behind my eyes.  
So I had better get back to it before the big guy turns up or the screaming starts.

 

*

 

Then there is Matt. Now that is something I can rest my thoughts on. Matt is sweet and calm and sees the world in blocky old-school 64-bit images. If I told you how young I was when I first started fantasising about making love to Matt you would probably be shocked and call me a liar. But pretty much as soon as I was in working order I was craving the pasty skin of the boy in the bed next to mine. Maybe it was just his proximity. 

Is this where I should be all cool and in denial and claim to feel nothing? Sorry to disappoint but even Little-Thief had seen where that will get you. It’s the first rule of the Mafiya code: to have no family other than your brother thieves. It gets you a fat neck and a sheepskin coat and a dumb life of obeying the guy in front’s orders. Whatever name I wear, I do not obey. So I’m happy to tell you that as far as Matt’s concerned I don’t mind any of the stuff he makes me feel.

And it turned out Matt felt pretty much the same way. So we just got on with it as kids do, no script, no clue, just hands and kisses in the dark. We never quite made it all the way, which I put down to Higher Source’s barbaric attitude towards human sexuality. As I said, Gentle it; I’m not repeating their atrocities here. We never quite got to home base before the summer ended and time run dry; the leafless afternoon I was called into Roger’s office and told that L had died.

After that, all I wanted to do was run.

The upshot of this is I left Wammy’s House _Virgo Intacta_ and sixteen months later that is still the state in which I find myself.

This is despite the unexpected events of five days ago. What happened then? I found Matt or possibly he found me. We haven’t worked out the details yet. But there he was stopped at a light on Santa Monica, and there I was doing what I do. You tell me who did the finding. 

 

*

 

Streetwalking is a misnomer; streetwalking is standing still, standing on spikes that drill in from the pads of the heel to the brain. Standing still is the second worst part of it, because stillness and waiting are not things that are comfortable for me.

Now hang on, once again I can feel the eye-rollers raising an exception. Didn’t you just call Mello a virgin? So how can he be out walking the streets?

The answer is simple: most street workers only do oral. You might be able to book one for a longer service, but the quickie blowjob is the street walkers staple. It’s easier to escape from; it’s less likely to leave you with a nasty disease, but mostly its mathematics. A lucky girl can do five blowjobs an hour but even the most efficient worker is unlikely to get away with full sex in much less than twenty minutes. The going rate for oral is $20, $25 if you do a girlfriend experience; nobody will pay a street-whore more than $30 for a full fuck and very few are crazy enough to do that without a rubber. So as tedious as the answer is: Mello is a virgin because it is most cost effective.

Of course, most street hookers are strictly bottom of the pile – too old or addicted to get a job at a massage place or with an agency, reduced to johns too cheap to pay for anything more than some shut-eye suction. That was until Valeri’s girls started appearing, fresh, young and still only $20. They are hated, but they are rarely fucked up because they always work with heavy protection; never far from a lounging man sweltering in a sheepskin jacket, hiding his eyes behind Armani shades.

Valeri’s top earner is a snub-nosed, slender, bob-cut blonde called Nadia. She’s a little flat-chested and very proud, but she’s leggy as an ostrich and plenty of men secretly enjoy the whole domme thing from a teenage Tartar. She’s been on Santa Monica for five months and that whole time she’s been raking it in.

Nadia was once a boy called Mello. She hopes she can be Mello again at some point in future, but she needs the time to be right. So for now she pulls her skirt down over her hipbones and zips her top half way down her chest; swallows contraceptive pills with her morning coffee like the other girls in the safe house, and waits.

Now hold on you are probably saying to yourself at this point. What kind of a story is this? So far I have met three characters who are all the same person, no plot of which to speak and this is all growing rapidly tiresome. But that is how we live at the bottom of the world; where one part knows things that another part of the same person may not live so happily if they knew. That’s why we have a lot of names. As for action, this will be arriving shortly. If you find the waiting uncomfortable, spare a thought for how our heroine feels.

She really hates waiting.

So when a hot pink Camaro pulls up at the lights Nadia was all over it, leaning her fake chest through the window and purring out:

‘Looking for a date?’

Because the hardest part is looking at them. Harder than waiting, much, much harder than the salty, smelly business of getting them off, the hardest bit is looking because it is then that Nadia feels the hate, and she has to bunch it down hard because if it escaped for a minute she would punch them in the face for daring. So she half looked, with her eyes kind of slid out of focus.

‘Mello!’ 

Too late – she took in the striped arms, the goggles and the gloves. Nadia froze and thought she should run, but by the time she heard the car pull away she realises she is looking out the windscreen.

Matt reached over and clicked the door shut before returning his eyes to the road, cigarette dangling from his lip. 

‘Did Near send you?’

On the roof above the city, two white birds nestled their clumsy, idiot child. Little-Thief watched it, dumb and shambling, unsure whether to hide as a rock or flap as a bird.

Something similar was just then happening inside Nadia. She was floating out of Mello even as her instincts are screaming at her to hide. There was something in the car that was making me stretch my wings.

I looked over again to the driver’s seat. Matt does not have a haircut. Matt has something brownish that sits on top of his head like a squid and neither grows or shrinks.

When I looked again, I had put my boots up on the dash. 

‘My grandmother died.’

That checked out. Matt did have family left in California, some grandparent to old or broken to take him in but who sent him letters and money that he had spent on fags, batteries and chocolate. He got a lot of mileage out of dairy milk in those days. 

‘So you inherit anything?’

‘The whole estate,’ said Matt, flicking the butt of his cigarette out the widow. ‘You’re in it.’

‘Okay,’ I gathered my composure. ‘Take a turn off right here and pull in behind the vacant lot.’

I put my feet back down on the floor and smoothed the front of my skirt. ‘I’m probably going to be watched from here on in so we’re gonna have to make this look real. You got any cash?’

‘Twenty dollars.’

‘That’ll be fine. Now park up and hand me the cash.’

‘What are you up to Mello?’

‘What does it look like I’m up too?’

‘It looks like you’re turning tricks.’

I undid my seatbelt and leaned across the gear shift placing my head directly in front of Matt’s crotch.

‘Eight years at the world’s greatest detective school weren’t wasted on you.’

With my head in front of Matt’s lap it was easy to reach in and open up his jeans -

‘Hey -,’

‘Shut up,’ I said moving my hand up to look like I was stroking his shaft. ‘I’m not going to attack you. As I told you, I’m being watched so we got to make this real, okay?’

‘Watched by whom?’

‘My pimp of course.’

‘Mello!’

‘Could you please make it look like I’m good at this?’

‘Huh?’

I tilted my head back and made a vague blowjob face.

‘Oh right, yeah.’ He paused while he copied me, rolling his head back on the seat. ‘What you really up to?’

‘Same as Matty, same as. Beating the competition and being the best.’

‘Kira’s not hiding in anyone’s boxers.’

‘Shame to inherit such a nice car on the same day you got your balls bitten off.’

Matt ruffled his hand through my hair. 

‘Do you do housecalls?’

‘Yeah.’

‘How much?’

‘Two hundred dollars.’

‘Can you come to this address tonight?’

Matt pulled out an empty fag packet with the name of a familiar hotel scrawled on the back. 

‘Classy joint. I’m surprised we haven’t run into each other already.’

Matt snorted but kept up the hair stroking. It was confusing to be touched like that, like he did back in the dairy milk days.

‘Thursday night. Uugh stop that.’

His hand stilled but he kept it there.

‘Why Thursday?’

‘Cos there’s a party at Valeri’s until then.’

‘Who’s she?’ said Matt, suddenly tense, which was kind of nice but damn stupid being jealous over a whore. 

‘He,’ I said, ‘he’s my importer. I need to go keep him sweet. Stop that.’ Matt was running his hand down my back, ‘Besides, you’re about to have the best orgasm of your life so it’ll look better if you’re good for few nights.’

‘Okay, 10pm Thursday night.’

‘I won’t sleep with you.’

‘I know.’

‘You should probably finish up about now.’

‘What – oh got you.’

Matt must have pushed his head back because the metal of the fly suddenly stuck right into my nose while he made a reasonable imitation of a porno cum-grunt.  
‘It didn’t need sound effects.’

I wiped my mouth and opened the passenger door, swinging my legs out first like a real girl.

‘Uh Mello. In the glove box. There’s something for you.’

My heartbeat picked up. I knew what was there even before I pulled out the purple bar.

‘It’s British.’

My stockings got soaked as a wash of sweat ran down the back of my legs. There’s nothing worse than sloppy wet nylon, but right then I didn’t care.

‘Thursday night.’ I said.

I didn’t look back. It had to look like just an ordinary john. When I heard the car pull away I walked over to Sasha who was waiting for the twenty dollars. Then I sat on a sidewall and slipped my mouth onto it. 

When I first tasted American chocolate, I nearly cried. That’s Wammy productions for you; unfazed by guns or torture, driven to despair by a Hershey’s bar. But to anyone raised in Britain, the first taste of the sugar-wax monstrosity the Americans call ‘chocolate’ is bound to be traumatic.

I was probably giving Sasha a freebie sucking on the chocolate in my leather gloves but the proper salty, cocoa-rich milky loveliness just tasted so good.

When I make it, I swear I’m going to have those chocolate bars imported.

 

*

 

It was spring on Santa Monica, already there was an amber tint to the days but the heat was not yet so heavy it took the tang of freshness from the sea.

This time last year, Nadia was in jail. Well, not quite jail, theoretically it was a refuge, a place of safety. They gave us hot chocolate and fluffy pyjamas with teddy bears on. But they did not let us leave.

When Nadia first came to the States she was not taken to Los Angeles. She was taken to an anonymous building with mattresses on the floor in a place she later found out was Brooklyn. Unfortunately, the player who run that house had developed a little of a drink problem and started to get sloppy. Barely four weeks after her arrival in the US Nadia was already being threatened with the plane home. 

Home? She had no idea where that might be; except it was none of the places she had lived in previously. 

At the centre we were visited by priests and reflexologists, Red Cross nurses who screened us for diseases and an art group who taught us to make necklaces by threading glass beads on a wire. There were also the cops: a blonde chick with delicate, prissy features and an irritating haircut and a guy about the same age with shifty looking eyes.

The other girls said they were CIA and not to speak to them. If Valeri finds out you spoke to them, you will be dead. So I don’t think they found out much. But the woman found out about Nadia because she was organising us to see the doctor the day they did our STI screens. For some reason, she was very nice to her after that. She even took her across town to a dentist where Alexi had got drunk and knocked around some of her teeth. 

Afterwards she brought Nadia chocolate milkshake from McDonalds and spoke to her in Russian. She had been born in Brooklyn, but her family were from Odessa.

‘I know you can’t say anything,’ she said. ‘But if you ever can talk, this is my cell.’

She didn’t eat anything herself. She didn’t look the type to eat in a fast food joint. She just sat there, speaking, while Nadia watched her and wondered why those silly bits of hair never moved.

Maybe she hairsprayed them to her cheeks.

Nadia suspected she told her colleague because she never got hassle off him. The girls used to complain about his hands, about his demands, about the watered down vodka he brought in for girls that were good to him. Nadia got no trouble. It could be that he knew, although it could also be because Nadia had a bit of a reputation as a bitch.

There was internet access at the hostel, monitored of course, but some girls used it to check in with their kids back home. Nadia used it for something else. She’d rigged one of the reflexologist’s mobiles to record the girls that swivel-eyes went with and downloaded it onto the same .ru hosting that Little-Thief had used so long ago.

A computer can be wiped, a photograph can be burnt, but internet fame is forever.

‘And I know the password,’ she whispered casually. ‘Any time I like I can change the setting to public.’

It wasn’t long before Nadia was back on the streets. Valeri had been very interested to learn everything she knew. He agreed it would not be prudent to have her pop up in the neighbourhood she had just been liberated from. So just as the cherry-blossoms were starting in New York she was given a pair of aviator shades and bundled in the back of an SUV heading west.

Which is where we now find her; wide eyed and begging the john she just serviced for five minutes on his mobile phone. Sasha had taken a shine to Ida, bought her a big velvet coat with a feathery hood like they wear in St Petersburg. She was off behind the Laundromat with him, putting in a payment so Nadia was quite alone.

‘Please Chad,’ Nadia whined, there are so many of them, but she has learned to be good with names and faces. ‘Just five minutes, I promise.’

She twisted a strand of blonde around her finger before she caught herself. God help her sink that low.

She knew she couldn’t risk Russian or he would get funny. They don’t like that the girls know other languages, that they can have secrets.

She soothed the john, running her hand down his chest. He passed the phone to her and she flipped it open and dialled the memorised number:

\- Halle, it’s me – Nadia.

 

*

 

The receptionist did not look surprised to see a blonde in an SS guard cap and zip front leather dress call for a guest in such an hour. He just gave out the room number and told her to go on up and knock. Nadia wiggled a thank you from her hips as she climbed the staircase; clutching her purse beneath her right hand.

It took a fair bit of – persuading – to get Sasha to lend her special protection that evening. But Nadia’s his best girl, and if she gets a bad feeling there’s no way he’d want his star money maker hurt. The number had come off the door but there was still the shadow of a seven white against the grime. Nadia knocked, heard movement and then:

‘Whoa Mello, you got legs!’

‘It’s Nadia,’ she hissed, pulling the door behind her and reaching into her purse.

Matt just stood there looking pale, crumpled and newly woken.

Then it wasn’t Nadia at all.

I clicked the safety off the Beretta and aimed at Matt’s head. 

‘Show me there’s no one else here.’

‘Missed you too,’ said Matt, raising his hands in the air. We did a circuit of the room in that fashion; I kicked about under the bed with my boots. On the whole, it would have been better if Matt had not found me like this, but that’s Matt. There’s got to be someone to know your secrets or you’d go mad; I know his and he knows mine. It’s not like I don’t have plenty on him.

If Near had been lurking about I’d have blown his overstuffed head off rather than let him live with the memory.

‘It’s just you, me and your paranoia,’ said Matt.

‘So where you get the two hundred bucks from?’

‘I pawned my DS.’

‘Fuck Matt.’ I sat down on the bed and lowered the gun. ‘You got any more –,’

He threw the bar into my hand before I finished asking. I tore it open and stuffed it in my mouth as I set about trawling the room for bugs while Matt tried subtly to look up my skirt. When one of us at least was satisfied, I sat back on the bed and let my body go Mello-shapes, curling my left knee up on the bed and leaving my right leg swinging. 

‘So I got an audition at the liveshow tomorrow.’ I said zipping off my boots.

Matt slumped down on the floor in front of me. To his credit he mostly looked at my face. 

‘You trying to get famous now?’

‘Don’t be a moron, Matty. It’s one of Rod Ross’ places. And I know from the other girls that he always auditions star performers personally.’

My toes were still smarting from being trapped in the crinkly nylon. I peeled down my stockings and wiggled them free.

‘So?’

‘So how long you been in LA for? Rod Ross is the guy who controls things here, all the drugs, the whores, the protection rackets. He’s got security coming out his eyeballs, but this way I can get a private audience with him - Nghaaah!’

‘What was that?’

I ran my feet over the cheap plush of the carpet again.

‘Fuck that feels good.’

I hadn’t realised what bitches the boots were until my feet squirmed at the scratch of carpet. I slid them over the floor like I was running trying to keep my breathing decent.

‘So –um, why you interested in this guy?’

Matt grabbed my foot and pushed his thumb hard into the centre. My soles were so tender from the sidewalk pounding that my back arched up. 

‘Aah! Gaaah!.’ I bit down on the leather of my glove to stop further embarrassment. ‘Well, I reckon by now Near’s got all the cops on his side so what does that leave me?’

‘So you’re still on about that?’ he said and drove another hard circle into the shredded muscle.

‘Yeah! Yes. Oh yes. I’m going to be good enough Matt. If all is left is the criminals then I’ll use them. I’ll pick the best and use them to prove I’m number one.’ I was panting. The pressure was agonisingly good. I licked the last of the chocolate from my back teeth and cursed Matt for knowing, for always being the one to -

‘Harder!’

Know.

‘Guess we won’t have to worry about making it sound real to the neighbours,’ said Matt, massaging his thumb under the ache in my ankle. ‘And why they call them kinky boots.’ 

‘My feet are just sore. Gah. Don’t make it sound so perverted.’

Matt was still wearing his goggles. I wanted to laugh. I wanted to ask if the freak act was twenty dollar’s extra.

‘Foot rub’s not perverted,’ he said suddenly going teasingly gentle on the pads. ‘Now this -.’ 

He kissed inside the arch of my foot.

‘- this is perverted.’ 

I kicked him with my free foot. My thighs were sweating again as five month’s worth of cramp emptied itself into his fingers. Matt ran his tongue down the length of my sole.

‘Mmm, gorgonzola.’

It’s not sex, I told myself, it’s relief. It’s not hurting anymore. It’s not sex, even though I could feel it at the base of my spine like I did in the dairy milk days when I was a bit more accommodating.

‘You rinse that mouth before you put it anywhere near me.’

Fuck.

I reached for the zipper of the dress. Matt slid his hands up my legs and under my ass to help me shrug out of it, before tugging at my panties with his free hand.  
He kept tugging.

‘This some kind of chastity device?’

‘They got a lot of work to do,’ I said, showing him how to roll the spandex down until my cock sprung out from between my legs. Matt pulled them over my feet while I sorted myself out. When I looked up he whistled.

‘Fuck-up and get back to my feet.’ 

I’d been hiding out as a girl so long my body felt alien under my fingers, hard ridges of muscle, taught and tough. It was like touching another person. It was like meeting an old friend.

Matt was sucking and biting on my toes as he ground his knuckles into the arch of my foot. I lay back and shut my eyes just feeling myself, rolling my balls, curling my fingers through the crisp springy hair of my pubes, feeling the release travel up my legs as I reached around and stroked the slick head of my cock.

I could hear whimpering. It just felt so fucking wonderful to have this again, to be touching my cock again, not to have it as my dirty secret but to have it hard and leaking out in the open with someone who wanted it here. Who wanted it bad. My feet didn’t hurt and my legs didn’t ache and I could smell my own hard on, musky and salty as I groaned and writhed and –

‘Oh God!’

Matt pressed his lips hard against my foot as I came. I think someone banged on one of the walls from the shouting but fuck it, if you don’t like it pay for a better place. I screamed so loud they should thank their stars the flimsy wall didn’t fall in.

Afterwards, my feet felt like gravity had been cancelled. They were nearly floating off the bed. Matt threw me another bar of chocolate and I worked on it as he undressed. All the time I’d been running, I’d forgotten how much I liked just seeing him naked. I stroked my tongue across the jagged edge of the bitten chocolate taking in what had changed. A little taller, a bit broader in the shoulders, a visible trail of hair now running from his navel to the dark curls around his fuller cock. 

I snapped the square of chocolate between my teeth.

He rolled naked on top of me and we were just boys again, firm and rough as we taste each other’s skin. It ached the same as it did then, angry and yearning all at once.

‘I didn’t rinse my mouth.’ said Matt. 

‘Fuck it,’ I gasped. Too many things have been in my mouth, too much pushing and thrusting. You lose your voice after a hard night. You feel swollen as if the back of your mouth has bruised. Usually couldn’t stand anything touching my mouth that wasn’t paying, but right now I wanted tongue. I wanted Matt to reclaim it.

We made out like that, touching each other, loving each other until finally Matt groaned and started to jerk himself off in my arms. I watched him pleasure himself while I stroked his chest and pinched at his nipples, moaning encouragement, saying stupid things about how big he’s gotten, how good he makes me feel, how satisfied I feel watching him touch himself. It was Matt, so it was alright; it was always alright. We didn’t need fancy moves. We’d been doing this since we were thirteen years old; it was as easy as falling out of bed, as natural as sunrise.

Soon Matt was moaning too, incoherent stuff, calling my name over and over and making the neighbours work the wall again. My boy, my lover was coming for me. I wanted to see it, smell it, taste it, so good, so right, so close. Matt’s balls tightened and he lifted his hips right off the bed; I spread my hand over his belly, eager to feel the struggling muscles relax.

‘Fuck Mello – I’m going to -,’

He just growled and I buried my nose in his hair soaking up the skin and the sweat and the sweet, sweet salty tang from the white fluid spurting over his hand. After he’d ridden it through I lifted his hand to my mouth and licked it clean. He watched me. It felt restful. It felt right. I wanted him to toss off in my arms forever.

We lay together for a while afterwards. Matt nosed the sweaty hair out of my eyes.

‘So just how you going to get the big shot guy on side?’

‘Can’t tell you.’ I said, running my hand over his sated hips. ‘Too dangerous. I’ll tell you once it’s worked.’

He kissed my forehead through the damp hair.

‘Couldn’t you have -,’

‘No I couldn’t have. I grew up with these guys. The only people who get anything out of a gang are the guys on top. All the wannabe’s spend years running round trying to prove themselves and most of them end up getting their faces shot off. I ain’t got the time for that.’

‘You make it sound like Amway with guns.’

I laughed.

‘Yes Matt, just like that. Amway with big fucking guns.’

‘But – Mello, you’re not really a girl.’

‘Of course I am Matt. I’m a good Catholic girl who is saving herself for her husband.’

As I’ve sunk into the scene I’ve gradually come to realise that this lie is probably as much for the pimps as for the punters. Hell, it was Valeri who bought me the beads. Half of them have done serious jail time anyway, so it’s not like a new thing to them. All they care is they’re getting head on tap from a bitch who is both filthy and five star gorgeous. Hail Mary, full of grace; grant me denial while I fuck a man’s face.

‘God Mello.’ He kissed my shoulder. If he starts getting soppy, I thought, I’ll rip that lovely fat dick off with my bare hands.

‘It’s all in the plan, Matty.’

‘I worry about you,’ he said.

‘I can take care of myself.’ I guessed I should be getting up. Sasha would be waiting outside. He’d given me two hours. I didn’t want him busting in and catching me like this.

‘Not about tomorrow,’ his voice was so fucking low it burnt something in my chest. ‘I’m sure you’ll handle that fine.’ He paused, nudging at my hair with his nose. ‘I worry about what’s in here.’

‘That’s past praying for.’

‘I know.’ He stroked my chest. ‘But I still worry that you’ll only feel good enough when you’re dead.’

That cult really fucked his head up.

 

*

 

When he finally makes it, Ross is an eight foot ‘roid head the size of a greyhound bus. I shove my notebook in the bag and stand up, indicating he should sit on the sofa. One of his minions shuts the door behind him and I hear them turn the lock. I guess they must have turned the camera off. I am bad at smiling so I do not. I just lean in and press my gloved hand hard against his shirt. It’s rougher than most girls can manage and I’ve not met a john yet who wasn’t excited by it. Ross’ flesh kind of wobbles like a water-bed under my fingers, definitely a ‘roider, and he clamps his hand hard around my wrist.

I hope he can cum, I think using my free hand to undo his tie. The last thing I need is to be locked in with some sadistic prick who has taken too many steroids to get off. 

‘You speak English?’ asks Ross, still crushing my wrist.

‘Yes I speak English,’ I reply in perfect Wammy’s British.

He shrugs. I toss his tie behind the sofa as far away from me as possible. I can see under his jacket he’s packing heat but then so am I. The guns are not the problem. If he is a pervert it won’t be the gun that gets used.

‘I thought you were one of those Russian bitches undercutting my girls.’

‘Ukraine,’ I say, unbuttoning his shirt and sliding my hand inside. It’s slippery and bare; the vain bastard must wax. ‘But I was brought up in boarding school in England.’ 

He’s got the smallest eyes I have ever seen, squashed in under his heavy brow like he had missed out on several phases of evolution.

‘Pretty flash for a whore.’

I shrug Ida’s coat off and sling it over the arm of the sofa, close enough to grab the gun from the pocket if needed.

‘I’m from good family.’

He looks me over with his sea slug proto-eyes. 

‘I’ll bet you are.’

A small white refrigerator had been placed just alongside the couch, probably just for the visit. I bend down, straight legged, like a show girl so I can feel the draught as my skirt rises up over my butt cheeks. 

‘Don’t think about it sugar,’ I say, straightening up and holding out the tequila, working my hand over his inner thigh, ‘just think about how good I’m going to make you feel.’

He takes the glass from my hand. Even to him, the lines must sound fake. Like I said, I’m no good at the geisha bit; I just want to get down to the sex. He rests his glass on his knee as I slip off his shirt and scoot between his legs.

‘Not so soon,’ Ross grunts touching me for the first time. I hadn’t counted on how much he wants to touch but his hand shoots straight into my vest, ‘Every minute you got a john in here costs him money. The more we make, the more you make,’ He pinches my nipple painfully but doesn’t seem disturbed by the lack of jiggle. ‘You give quality service here.’

I try not to grimace. It not like I want a job in this cum-dump anyway and I could do without the lecture. Reluctantly, I slide back onto his massive thigh. 

‘That’s the problem with you Russians,’ he says and shoves his hand roughly up my skirt. That’s trouble. I wiggle my hips away as Matt makes an appearance in my head, ‘But Mello - you’re not a real girl’. I move the hand not stroking into Ida’s coat where I’d stashed the Beretta. ‘You’re just after the money,’ he scratches over my stocking tops, ’all you’re good for is street work.’ 

I moan and wiggle my ass against his crotch. Like I said, I’m much better at faking sex than faking nice. So the dumb bastard actually looks like he believes I’m getting off.

‘You better make this worth my while.’

‘Mmm,’ I nod, bringing my tongue out to lick at my lips as if being squeezed like sausagemeat is doing something for me. ‘Not Russian.’

‘Same thing.’

It’s not but the time to argue the point was not now. Now was for arching against his cock and lapdancing him with my ass while keeping his hands off my crotch and my fingers hooked around the trigger. He gets too close and I wiggle away again until he’s panting like a dog and I can feel his sweat slippery against my back. 

I wrap my arms around his shoulders and whisper into his neck.

‘If you hate the Russians so much why do you put up with them?’

He swallows a mouthful of tequila and laughed. 

‘So just because you’re the biggest draw on Santa Monica you think you’re Lady Macbeth now?’

‘What you talking about, sugar?’ 

I decide now is as good at time as any to broach his pants. I’m pretty sure I just messed up, but I’m also fairly sure people are less likely to kill you while getting a handjob off you.

‘Now that’s more like it,’ he opens his legs wider allowing me free play with his cock. ‘You ain’t no babushka in the land of the free honey. So shut your mouth and make your dollar and don’t play politics with the big guys that are no concern of yours.’

I reach my hand further into his trousers. As expected, his balls are shrunken to peanuts, but I gave what was there a good roll before working up to the head. It seems to have the desired effect in relaxing him.

I let him kiss me. It’s fairly disgusting and I try not to think of Matt and how it had been with us last night. Ross is sloppy and tasted of sour tequila, but at least he doesn’t smoke. I can’t take that taste when it reminds me. I start to kiss my way down his throat.

‘Do you do a girlfriend experience?’

‘No,’ I say.

‘I thought you Red bitches always did.’

‘Maybe. But here we don’t. Here we always use protection, sir.’

He lifts my face and looks at me.

‘Clever girl.’ He strokes my cheek thoughtfully with his enormous fingers. ‘You’re a very beautiful girl.’

‘Yes,’ I say.

‘You should keep yourself safe.’

‘Yes.’ 

‘So if I find you offering any extra services while you work here, I will see to it you do not leave here so beautiful.’

‘Yes sir.’

‘Now get down to it.’

He must have put aftershave down there because aside from the usual crotchy musk I find myself sucking in sandalwood and spices. I want to laugh almost as much as I want to gag, but you get pretty good at controlling your reflexes. I pull my teeth over my gums and start on an all- the- trimmings blow-job which works well enough judging from his clawing at my ass.

Then suddenly, he pushes me back:

‘Well, you’re good Nadia, but I’m still not happy about employing a Russki.’

I lean back on my heels. If he’s kicking me out now it it’s a disaster, but I don’t think he is. His cock’s still a tent pole poking up through his gaping fly. He’ll want that seeing to before he slings me out.

‘What don’t you like?’ I purr, ‘haven’t I shown you quality service?’

‘I don’t trust you.’

‘That’s sad,’ I say, leaning back into him, ‘You’re a good man, a big man. What would it take to make you trust me?’

His enormous hands are digging chunks out of my ass.

Oh I think, that. It’s going to take that.

I lean in and stroke his face. I’m sweating now, I don’t want to be, but I am. A little pool of sweat is collecting at the base of my spine. I run my gloved fingers over his lips, undulating my hips and tell myself I can do this. I can do anything, because I’m number one.

He doesn’t miss the invite. I am seized me by the hips and suddenly whirled round.

‘Oh baby, no,’ I coo, trying to rub my ass against him and act coy at the same time.

‘You holding out on me?’ says Ross, shoving one of his twinkie-roll fingers into my ass cleft.

‘No sugar,’ I say, making a pathetic grasp at my rosary, ‘just do it so you don’t spoil me.’

His fingers worm insistently under the black spandex between my legs, and then he let out an enormous laugh.

‘So it’s true you Ruski bitches only take it up the ass.’

He’s millimetres away from my cockhead, and though I’m sure he knows, I don’t think he’s told himself he knows, which means I’m pretty much done for if he moves his hand up a little higher.

‘Please,’ I say, trying to sound a bit teary, ‘Please let me feel you inside me without dishonouring me.’

He’s nearly hysterical with laughter.

‘Don’t worry little Tsarina, I’ll fuck you like a bullet train and still leave you a virgin on your wedding night.’

I decide to cut my losses and pull down my panties, pull them right down so they’re hanging over my left boot and won’t hobble me if I have to move fast. I scoop my cock up into my hand away from his exploring fingers, writhing a little, like a girl feeling herself up. He’s pushing his fingers pretty insistently inside my ass now and my body is objecting.

I have words with my body but my heart continues racing.

‘You touching your pussy?’ Thank God he’s vain and dumb.

‘I want you inside me honey,’ I moan.

‘Here I come, Red Princess.’

Then he’s inside and for a moment I’m too shocked to feel pain. There’s nothing except my balls popping out from where I tucked them. It doesn’t last.

Sex is weird. Sex makes you lose control of bits of yourself. So I’d guessed it was going to hurt but I thought maybe like a burn or at worst like breaking your arm. But it’s not like that. When he finally thrusts what happens is my body goes ice-cold and my stomach heaves until I’m swallowing down bile.

‘Oh fuck yeah,’ Ross grunts. ‘Fuck yeah.’

I’d like to moan, to gasp ‘oh honey,’ and seal the deal, but I can’t because nobody tells you it doesn’t just hurt in your ass but it hurts everywhere, spiked, shattered-glass the bloodstream and I can’t open my mouth or I’ll vomit. I have to hit him. I have to get him off me. 

Then suddenly, I’m not there. I’m on the roof tiles of Wammy house, peering down through the crosses. 

‘I think Roger was a little concerned he hadn’t seen you,’

There’s something velvety about L, the darkness of his eyes, the silent way in which he moves. He’s crawled up behind me on the roof and I didn’t even see he was there. We look over the edge of the roof to where Rod Ross is boning my body and I feel sad that L is watching, that L knows. 

‘I think Roger can go fuck himself,’ I said, but it comes out thin and reedy as my back buckles in pain.

L reaches out and very gently strokes the hair out of my face with his thumb and forefinger.

‘Do you know Mello, the strange thing is – had I been asked to pass an exam to become L I could not say with any certainty I would have been the most successful candidate.’ 

I’m bleeding. I don’t know how I know this, up on the roof the pain’s just hazy, like the fog that drifts across the English lowlands, the autumn mist that L and I are wrapped in. I just know I am, like you know a bone is broken when you look down at it all-shapes. 

L watches with his wide sad eyes. I think he was the first person that was ever kind to me. The first person with any power, I mean. He believed in me. When he let me scream and shout and kick Roger’s room about, curled patiently:

‘Have you quite finished Mello?’

Did he think that this kid he put up with, that he stuck up for, would come to this? His eyes don’t move and his fingers graze his mouth as we look down at some Mafia boss screwing a twenty dollar whore.

‘I’m so sorry you had to know,’ I say. 

‘I think you should go back to class now,’ says L. 

Then I am falling off the roof again and this time I must have broken my back properly because the pain in my hips is every bit as bad as it was in my arm when it broke. There’s gold on the edge of my vision, and there’s screaming.

I check my mouth. There’s screaming, but it isn’t me. There’s the rip-rip of gunshots and the lock comes crashing off the door. 

I know what I look like. Even in trousers, I know I don’t really look like a boy. It’s useful, the way it gives people pause as they try to work out what I am. It gives me time to act. 

So when Valeri Tymoshenko kicks open the door to find his best girl spread across Rod Ross crotch with her cock and balls out, it gives him pause. Not for long, but long enough for me to pull the gun from Ida’s pocket and put a bullet through his head. Then I’m on my feet and trying not to twist my ankles from the recoil firing off at Sasha and Nikolai as they crowd in through the door. By then Ross is on his feet too and we’re behind the sofa, avoiding the blind gunshots coming in through the doorway and busting holes in the plywood.

Valeri must have thought he was doing a straight repossession; he couldn’t have expected Ross’ full security team to be in the lobby waiting. So with a few more shots it was all over, six of the Odessa lot dead, two ran out the staircase; Ross down one with another lying on the carpet gurgling.

‘I suggest you make this look like your idea,’ I hiss to Ross, who is now pointing his gun firmly against my jaw.

‘You fucking crazy freak,’ shouts Ross, ‘You trying to start a gang war.’

‘Looks pretty finished to me.’

‘We ain’t got the firepower to take out the rest of those rats.’

‘You don’t have to. Just about now the FBI will be raiding their headquarters and three of their whore places. You’re all clear to move in.’

Ross continues to goggle at me. He really has missed the fore-brain boat.

‘What do you want?’

‘To catch Kira.’

He just stares at me. He even lowered the gun in shock.

‘Don’t tell me you’d not feel safer with Kira gone.’ 

‘You’re crazy.’

‘Maybe. Maybe not. I have just wiped your rival clean out of Los Angeles. Don’t you think that proves something?’

‘Alright,’ says Rod, ‘we’ll discuss further in headquarters.’

‘Fine,’ I say. ‘But two things: you really need your men to think taking down Valeri was your idea. For your leadership’s sake.’

‘My leadership is non-negotiable.’

The gun comes back.

‘Absolutely. That’s why it’s important your men think it was you. All I am interested in is Kira.’

‘Like I said, we’ll talk at my place.’

‘Very good. That leads me to the second point.’

He lowers the gun and stashes it back into the holster.

‘Please find me some pants.’

 

* 

 

They pulled some leather strides off one of the dead Ukrainians. He was taller than me, so when I finally lost my spike heels I had to cut them off with a knife. It made the edge kind of raggedy, which I like. It took about another eight hours of haggling up in headquarters, during which time Ross left me in no doubt that he had no qualms about working off some of his pussy-fatigue on a hot blond in black leather, before the deal was sealed. Mello was the new adviser to the LA mafia, and hunting Kira was top of the gang’s agenda.

After that, I was free to do as I pleased. So I sneaked back to the old flea pit and rapped the door of room seven.

Matt did not seem fazed that I was now a boy again. He’s not one to sweat the small stuff. He’s a kid I can rely on, which was useful as I was pretty beat by the time I got there. He stripped me off and cleaned me up; I repaid the favour by falling fast asleep on him.

Which is where I am now, with Matt’s warm weight beside me. It feels very grown up to finally share a double bed together. I’m still sore; I think that I must have tensed more during the gunfight than I realised, and firing in stiletto heels certainly shook me around. But it’s a warm ache with Matt snuffling next to me; almost relaxing.

Matt acts as both painkiller and sedative. I could tell you the theoretical neurobiology behind it, Wammy’s House encouraged it’s would be-L’s to read up extensively on human psychology; to a fourteen year old that’s pretty much a licence to read up extensively on sex. So there’s something about the brains of kids that grew up freelance; kids like Little-Thief, that makes them hyper-alert and painfully short on all the hormones that calm them.

Matt makes me make those hormones. Which I guess is why I keep him around. I’d probably end up on drugs or something otherwise. You can look it up too; it is not my place to do your homework for you and besides I think this story is drawing to its natural close.

So I feel much better when I wake up. I guess I’m still pretty bad down there; my whole ass feels swollen and it’s going to start smarting like hell when I move. Though right now, I don’t need to. I have done more than enough for one day; now it was time to take time. Because today is the day I won.

It’s easy enough to say I will do anything to get X. People say that all the time. They might even mean it. But it is another thing altogether to be able to go through with it. Bodies let you down at the oddest moments; they fumble for a gun, they run when they should stay. 

I kind of guessed I had a bit of an advantage that way; as I said, kids who grow up freelance have a natural ability to do things that others would not dare. But I didn’t know for sure until this morning and now I do.

I know that I could kill without flinching; that whatever action is needed, my body will not let me down. I can bargain with my life if needs be, if that is what it takes. I’m not just a person who says the words. I know I can go through with it, with anything.

That’s how I know I will beat Near. That’s how I know I will win.


End file.
